Floyd Wilde

So I got a Samsung Galaxy S several months ago. It’s one of those things, seeing as though a smart phone can cost a bit, I waited to do and about the time the “S II” was nearly out I finally decided it was time I needed an Android device. The price came down on the older Galaxy S about this time, so it seemed like the right time. Another benefit of going with the older phone, since I was considering to wait a few more weeks for the new faster S II, was lots of people have already been hacking on it for a while, so there should be a lot of good information in forums and blogs about neat things to do with it. So I got the phone, but I found the information on rooting and updating it with newer versions of Android a bit daunting. Specifically when flashing the device from GNU/Linux, most guides seemed to suggest using another OS, which is a silly idea, so I was confused how to proceed. It was not until I had some downtime and could really do some research that I finally upgraded from the anciet version of Android 2.1, to 2.3.5 “Gingerbread”. My first thought when I got the phone was, how do I ever do with out it? Now after using it for several months with the stock ROM, my thought is how could I use this outdated software for so long?

So the main problem I faced was that there are a few software tools you need to use to flash the phone, and the popular ones either don’t work or don’t work well on Linux. When you start your googling, you will find all these references to Kies or Odin or something. If installing Windows is not something your likely to do this century, and your too lazy to hijack someones Windows box then here is the link you need first:

http://www.glassechidna.com.au/products/heimdall/

I always read that domain as Glass Enchilada, which sounds unapetizing, but the software saved my day and is worthy of a donation. So once you know what tool you will be using, it makes it easier to grep the Internet via Google for some guides on how to use heimdall.

source

http://therumpus.net/2011/10/what-is-already-living-author-autobiography-and-fiction-in-the-age-of-social-networking/

http://50watts.com/1101836/Poets-Ranked-By-Beard-Weight

A doodle atop some pics from my flickr stream.

ffmpeg -ss 500 -i SvengaliJohnBarrymoreBKCap1931_512kb.mp4 -vframes 1 output.png

Paint w/ gimp.

Happy to have alternate ways to mark time.

~$ ddate
Today is Boomtime, the 11th day of Confusion in the YOLD 3177

~$ hebcal -TS
4th of Sivan, 5771
Parashat Beha'alotcha
48th day of the Omer


Sad that there isn’t a good Linux command line tool for the Mayan calendar. Maybe there is but I just don’t know about it. I remember finding one on sourceforge a while back, but too lazy to go search it out again. I like this site:

http://www.azteccalendar.com/

So today is: 12.19.18.7.16

Other things that I have done in the past half hour:

• Killed a giant cockroach.
• Contemplated the fact that, optimistically I have 50 or so years to live.
• Reaffirmed my devotion to creativity.
• Upgraded this wordpress installation.
• Watched this video. Again.
• Read through some Wikipedia front page articles.

Hmm, now I have to do something else.

We were on the train
I lost my balance
He was ready for the moment
She was beautiful
Dark hair, charcoal eyes
We got off at our stop and life resumed as normal
But I can not forget that connection

I hate HTML formatted emails. There I said it. I’m normally a peaceful person, but like anyone else I’m prone to fits of computer rage. HTML formatted emails were one of the things that invoked this rage, but now I find it amusing to remove the design effort that was put into these messages with a few quick clicks.

When Gmail introduced themes, up till then I had not even thought about changing the interface. Before starting to use Gmail, I would use the Mutt text based email client, directly on a mail server. I really liked that client and got used to reading text only emails. Now there are two Gmail themes I like, “Contrast Black” and “Terminal”. While Terminal really gives you that console feel and it’s very similar to the theme/profile I use in my console sessions, I do find “Contrast Black” a bit more friendly to the eyes. The problem is sometimes I get these HTML formatted messages, that do not display properly:

This is actually not a bad one, at least the text is not the same color as the background, so I don’t have to highlight the message to see if there is even any text there. If my cursor was not over the title, there would just be a black empty space since that text is black, and so is my background. There is also a side bar, that I find distracting and would prefer not to see. I just want to read, or in reality, scan the message for anything interesting and then archive or delete it. I have not found any option in Gmail, to just click a button and strip the HTML formatting. Something that is easily done in Thunderbird for instance. So my current work around, is to go and hit reply, and then in the composition window that opens up, there will be that link I’m looking for “Plain Text”:

When you click that link, an alert box pops up and my computer rage meter blips a little bit, as I scream in my mind, “Yes I’m sure! Strip the damn formatting already!”

So now the readability is improving, but I’m not quite where I want to be yet. I have the HTML formatting removed, and I see a quoted message in the gmail composition form field. I don’t want to read the message there, but I can already start scanning it better. Next I’ll address the reply to myself:

Click send and now I have the email message almost the way I want it. But there is still the “>” characters at the beginning of each line, since it’s really a message reply and this character sets off the quoted message. I thought briefly about creating a message filter on my email server, to pipe the message through and strip out the quoting characters. That started to seem like work, so then I thought hmm… there must be some way to do search and replace in Gmail? Well after looking around, it doesn’t seem like there is, maybe a limitation to Gmail? Possibly one area that makes Thunderbird or Mutt still a good alternative as a mail client. Hopefully you are not writing emails long enough to require search and replace anyway.

Once I started thinking about Thunderbird though, a mail client I also use and enjoy, I realized there must be a firefox plugin that can help. Thanks to a lifehacker article, I was able to Google up the FoxReplace plugin. I just added one rule, to remove the “>” quotation character, and I can apply it with a keystroke. Finally I’m able to read your HTML formatted message:

It may seem like a lot of steps just to get a plain text email, but for the messages I really want to read (like io9′s newsletter) I am willing to spend 10-15 seconds to get things just right.